Real Roots

Back in my DC days, when I attended talks, appeared on panels, radio and TV, went to pubs and parties crowded with smart, ambitious young politicos (along with the inevitable drunken-hangover stay at Hitchens' pad), I witnessed first-hand the detachment of the American political class from the American public. Not that I was terribly naive about this reality going in; but direct exposure helps to hammer home points, and listening to the utter contempt the Beltway crowd had for the masses at times shocked even me. When I told my relatives about it, they weren't surprised, but neither were they convinced that this was truly the case. For if those who worked on or wrote about Capitol Hill hated and feared them, then what did Congresspeople and Senators think? The idea that The People mattered only during elections (and oftentimes, not even then), was, I believe, too negative for some of my relatives and their friends to take, especially if they were Republicans. After all, the GOP cares for its own, right?

I was reminded of all this during last week's little "netroots" dust-up, when Max Sawicky questioned not only the theoretical prowess of online libs, but also their dedication to something other than corporate Dems. A few libs, like Kos and Steve Gilliard, turned Max's point around to make it seem as if Max was the political elitist, and they merely humble servants of a nation in desperate need of de-Bushification. But other libs used Max's critique as an opening to discuss the actual meaning of political theory today, and whether or not knowing your Marx or Alinsky (Paul Goodman, anyone?) really matters anymore. This then led to an attack on the George Scialabba review in the Nation that I linked to last week, for it seemed to certain younger libs that Scialabba, like Max, was out of touch with what's really going on.

Matthew Yglesias, a well-regarded online, Beltway lib, found terrible Scialabba's idea that American lefties actually engage the larger populace in an effort to raise political issues, if not political consciousness. As Scialabba put it:

"How to accomplish it? I don't know. Perhaps population exchanges or year-abroad programs between blue and red states. Perhaps The Nation should offer free subscriptions to registered Republicans. Perhaps Katha Pollitt and Ann Coulter (or Thomas Frank and David Brooks, or Greg Palast and Matt Drudge) should barnstorm the country, the way Stanley Fish and Dinesh D'Souza did in the 1990s. Perhaps all secular liberals should sign a pledge: Every time one evangelical reads a nonreligious book, one of us will go to church. Somehow or other, someone must sow a healthy appetite for informed, discriminating political argument across large swaths of the electorate where it now appears lacking. Otherwise, public life will become wholly (what it now is largely) a marketing competition, and nothing more."

Yglesias utterly rejected such a straightforward, grassroots suggestion:

"[T]he underlying presumption here -- that political progress depends on massively increasing the general populations knowledge of American politics and public policy -- is dead wrong. 'Informed, discriminating political argument' is never going to be popular 'across large swaths of the electorate' because most people simply don't care very much about politics. This is a fact of political life -- of human nature -- that successful movements seek to deal with, not something to sit around pining over while the world passes everyone by."

Apart from Yglesias' open elitism, which is no surprise, given his Harvard background, I'm always amused by how profoundly limited many Ivy Leaguers are. Perhaps the reason why "most people simply don't care very much about politics" is because American elites have worked long and hard to depoliticize the population. You don't have to be a Lippmann scholar to know that historical truth. But young Matt seems to seriously believe that, unlike him and his smart friends, the rabble out there just isn't up to understanding the larger forces that shape and steer contemporary society. Indeed, Yglesias goes to fellow Harvard alum, Sam Rosenfeld, for back-up on this point:

"[T]he modern liberal emphasis on making the public somehow smarter and better informed about politics as the central means of bringing about progressive change has amounted to a catastrophic misallocation of energy. I'm not sure what empirical basis anyone has in mind for such a notion: Do people really think that, say, New Deal reforms, or those brought by the Civil Rights Movement or during the Great Society came about because Americans of those periods happened to be better informed than today -- because, that is, the political discourse was more elevated and sophisticated, and demagogues and morons had a harder time finding an audience? Isn't it a bit more likely -- and, indeed, something of a constant of human societies -- that the 'quality' of mass political discussion and the political sophistication of the average citizen have always been pretty tawdry, and that effecting beneficial political change has a good deal more to do with manning and strengthening particular institutions and engaging directly in raw political struggle than it does with sprinkling enlightenment across the land?"

What the fuck do they teach at Cambridge anyway?

Yes, there have always been uninformed, tribalisitic and superstitious Americans throughout this country's history. Millions of them, in fact. But to claim that average, working people were just as depoliticized in the New Deal era, or during the Civil Rights struggle, as many are today is self-serving, ahistorical horseshit. One can go back even further, to the radical years of the late 19th century, to the Industrial Workers of the World of the early 20th century, periods when numerous working-class newspapers enjoyed wide circulations. The American and immigrant workers of that time were highly politicized, so much so that US elites were not only alarmed and threatened by what they saw as a possible uprising, or even revolution, they did what they could to suppress this type of political activity, which of course included shooting workers in the streets and jailing those leaders who were deemed "anti-American Reds." The political discourse of that time not only was "more elevated and sophisticated" than now, it was more effective in educating those who lacked the money or connections to attend elite institutions like Harvard. Read Emma Goldman's autobiography for a closer look at this now-forgotten era of working class activism and political awareness, then wonder what the hell Yglesias and Rosenfeld are really talking about.

It's certainly true that large segments of working people today lack the same outlets and support networks that workers of earlier periods fought for. Decades of assaults on workers' rights accompanied by relentless anti-union propaganda has taken a heavy toll, and it remains one of the true successes of the American political and economic elite. But awareness from below has not been completely stamped out, as we presently see in the anti-sweatshop movements and the ongoing union struggles of Justice for Janitors. George Scialabba's recommendation is a good one -- "we" should be mixing more with those locked out of the current American system and making "our" ideas more accessible and better understood. I've done my share of this over the past few years, and it's not an easy or even pleasurable task. There are more setbacks than breakthroughs, and perhaps soon I'll write more about this. Still, it's worth a shot, especially in a criminal time like now. How much longer can we afford the "insights" and "guidance" offered by those from on high, or those, like Yglesias and Rosenfeld, who pine for such elevated status?